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Movie Colt Lightning

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  • Leadeye

    Active Member
    Rating - 100%
    2   0   0
    Dec 29, 2020
    233
    76
    Great Southern Forest of Indiana
    Some time back I bought a non functional Colt Lightning 44-40. It had "western" stamps on it which I learned later were from Western Costume Company, an early prop house in California. The rifle was filthy inside, but after cleaning and fabricating a leaf spring I got it back in shooting order and started checking up on it's history. The internet said that the Colt Lightning use in movies was rare, limiting it to an episode of the Rifleman and Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More. Western costume didn't work with the company that made the Rifleman, but Carlos Simi, the prop master for all of the spaghetti westerns worked exclusively with Western Costume. Stills give a glimpse of a Lightning on Colonel Mortimer's gun carrier, but that's all. I have no paperwork to back it up, and it's probabaly just a gun that saw a lot of hard work in the hands of various buckaroos on movie sets, but I can speculate that it's there with Lee van Cleef.:)
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    V-Tach

    Watching While the Sheep Graze
    Lifetime Member
    Rating - 100%
    7   0   0
    Sep 30, 2012
    8,899
    96
    Texas
    Very cool...........if you could ever find the provenance.......wow....

    I found parts extremely hard to find for the Lightning.....after I bought one....
     

    Texasjack

    TGT Addict
    Rating - 50%
    1   1   0
    Jan 3, 2010
    5,869
    96
    Occupied Texas
    It's always fun when people post about unusual or rare guns, particularly when there's a cool story attached. A quick google shows that these rifles were made from 1884 to 1904, and that they were adopted by the San Francisco Police Department. (It wouldn't be a stretch to guess that the movie prop folks may have picked up some surplus rifles from the SFPD.)
     

    KJQ6945

    Well-Known
    Rating - 0%
    0   0   0
    Jul 31, 2020
    1,592
    96
    Ben Wheeler
    Here is another example of Leadeye costing me money. :laughing:

    When he first got this gun and was cleaning it up, I learned that I needed a Lightning.

    52B76A62-3CFD-40AD-B581-E1FA01CAA11C.png


    Keeping up with the Jones’s was easier than trying to keep up with Leadeye. :roflsmile:
     
    Every Day Man
    Tyrant

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